Spiral Investing in Rural California While AT&T Invests in Sacramento Community Broadband Bits Podcast 267
b"With the right policies and local investment, Spiral Internet could bring high quality Internet access to much of northern California. Spiral is a small private company and its CIO, Michael Anderson, talks with us today for episode 267 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.\\xa0We discuss Spiral's enthusiasm for open access fiber networks and how the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is funding some rural Internet investment. In particular, we get a sense of how Spiral is making the transition from reselling DSL to fighting for open fiber networks in rural California.\\xa0One of the larger challenges today is an effort in the California Legislature to modify the rural broadband subsidy program to essentially give AT&T veto power over the CPUC grants. As we have discussed many times before, AT&T and some of the cable companies want a right of first refusal to grants, a policy that would dramatically disrupt the process for the smaller companies that are actually investing in high quality connectivity in areas poorly served by the incumbents.\\xa0Read the transcript of this show here.We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please\\xa0e-mail us\\xa0or leave a comment below.This show is 28 minutes long and can be played on this page or\\xa0via iTunes\\xa0or the tool of your choice\\xa0using this feed.You can download this mp3 file directly from here.\\xa0Listen to\\xa0other episodes here\\xa0or\\xa0view all episodes in our index.Thanks to Arne Huseby\\xa0for the music. The song is\\xa0Warm Duck Shuffle\\xa0and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license."